


Better Late than Never

by TheArchaeologist



Series: Apple of my Eye [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Apocalypse, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Five is Klaus' Son AU, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Parent Klaus Hargreeves, Sad Ending, Young Number Five | The Boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27460261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArchaeologist/pseuds/TheArchaeologist
Summary: Today is not a special day, nor is it particularly noteworthy. There is nothing waiting for him the moment he wakes, ready to be seen and gasped at, and only the sounds of the wind, ash, and crumbling rubble sing their greetings as he heaves himself up from the warmth of sleep.For Five, today is just another day in the apocalypse.[Set in Timeline One]
Relationships: Dolores & Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)
Series: Apple of my Eye [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1519883
Comments: 29
Kudos: 81





	Better Late than Never

****

**Day 772**

The sensation of fingers running through his greasy hair was what gently pulled Five from his lull of deep sleep, softly picking away the lingering dreams clinging to his mind and rousing his body to shift tiredly against his pillow, the need for another five, ten, fifteen minutes ready to whine on the tip of his tongue.

“Come on.” A voice, masculine, says somewhere above him, perched on one side of his bed. “It’s time to wake up, Five.”

“Not yet…” Five mutters, tugging at the blankets already wrapped tightly around him.

“You’ll be late.”

“I won’t.”

There is a chuckle, indulgently amused. “You will. Up, Five, it’s time to go.”

Sighing deeply, a tired rumble in the back of his throat, Five blearily peels one eye open, and then the other, the world greeting him with fuzzy shades of brown and grey. Slowly, his brows furrow, and the last lingering throes of exhaustion and sleep melt like ice in a heatwave as Five lurches upright, inhaling sharply as his heart does a strange, almost nauseating leap.

“Dad!”

His cry goes unheard, shouted out in an empty world, and the mirage-hazy image of his Father sat at his side, smiling with warm, shining green eyes, vanishes into the wind, swept off to join the trickling ash and dust.

For a long, quiet moment, Five sits there, breathing heavily, blinking at the empty space, his hands fisted hard on his lap and fingers latching onto the blanket with a vice-like grip.

Off in the distance, something collapses.

Overhead, the clouds drift impartially, blotting the sky of any blue hues.

Five ducks his head, sniffing hard. 

Then he nods an assertive, “Right.”

Getting to his feet, he makes quick, practiced work of rolling up his scavenged bedding, binding it tightly with a piece of repurposed rope. A few scuttling bugs scamper out, fleeing the remains of his lingering body heat on the blankets.

His bedding now in hand, Five trudges out over the mounds of bricks and rubble towards the wooden wagon safely parked just outside the ruins of the building, within easy reach but too cumbered with supplies to warrant the effort of dragging it over the mortar debris for one night’s camp.

Anyway, she said she enjoyed the view.

“Good morning, Dolores.”

She greets him with a smile, one that meets her eyes. He returns it, only a little haltingly, and places the bedroll next to her, offering her shoulder a light squeeze.

“Anything happen overnight?”

A few insects, she reports, creeping over to inspect the new thing in their area, but nothing else. The stars were beautiful, though, appearing somewhere around midnight. The clouds parted for a while, giving a brilliant, unpolluted view of the universe beyond.

“I’m pleased to hear it. Maybe I should stay up tonight and see it for myself.”

Dolores instantly chastises the comment, reminding him, as Five roots through the carefully sealed bags for something he can chew on for breakfast, that he needs his rest. They are covering a lot of ground at the moment, and each venture uses up the precious calories he still has clinging to his bones.

“If this is another argument about me getting too thin-”

It is, she tells him pointedly, with enough force behind her words that Five pauses, swallowing the mouthful of pistachio nuts dry.

“Dolores-”

She raises an eyebrow at him.

“I…I’m trying, okay? It’s not easy. I’m doing what I can.”

Immediately, her face softens, Dolores’ gaze turning sad. Her hand is outstretched towards him, and Five silently interlocks their fingers, feeling her hold tighten against his. 

Around them, the flecks of ash, as light as feathers and cool in comparison to the blazing embers that spewed from the heavens for the first few weeks, float listlessly towards the ground, and with a touch his Dad would use when tucking the curls of Five’s hair behind his ear, Five brushes the fluttering specks away from Dolores face, adjusting her shirt where it has slipped on one shoulder.

Dolores thanks him.

“S’alright.” He murmurs, stepping back with an awkward clearing of his throat.

Licking his lips, Five unzips the front of his jacket, tugging out the old and badly rain-damaged map from the folds of his inside pocket, squatting down beside the wagon so he can show Dolores. The large open page is marked with the ink of a variety of different coloured pens, each sectioning, categorising, and highlighting a multitude of areas both in the city and the surrounding area, a self-made key at the edge helping Five keep track of what each means.

Experience has told him that winter will soon be approaching, and once it hits, there is very little Five can do other than hunker down, pray to whichever God fancies listening that his shelter survives the howling blizzards, and ration every ounce of food he has down to the final crumb. If he is to make it through yet another, he needs to do a final thorough sweep for supplies, anything from food to water bottles to thermal clothing, hoarding them away at the shelter he spent most of the summer constructing while the weather was still good.

Dolores calmly points out how the apocalypse has turned him into a squirrel.

He tuts at her, but ignores the comment.

“This is where we need to search today.” Pointing out an unmarked area, Five scans over what used to stand there, noting the warehouses. “Then we’ll head back home, drop everything off, and then try a bit further west, see if any of those trees still stand. We’re going to need the firewood.”

Nodding her approval, Dolores settles back into the wagon as Five tucks the map away, reminding him as she does that he needs to be on the lookout for books, as well, and not just the science ones.

Five pulls a face, taking the wagon’s handles in both hands. “Aren’t you bored of those yet?”

She does not know what he is talking about, she tells him breezily.

“You very well know what.” He hums, starting off down the broken, rubble-filled road. “I wouldn’t care, but then you make me read them to you.”

There is nothing bad about that, she tells him.

“Dolores, if I have to read one more description about _waist-length hair_ and _deep blue orbs_ and _cupid-bow lips_ , I will find the nearest chemical fire and throw myself in it!”

Rolling her eyes, Dolores sets in for what sounds like a lengthy and pretty nagging explanation as to why dollar-store romance novels are the height of modern literature, bringing up examples from the collection she forced Five to gather and recite the previous year during the long, cold months.

Five lets her ramble, her insistent, constant chatter providing a comforting blanket of noise in the otherwise creaking silence of the apocalypse, giving him something to listen to as he clambers from one vaguely salvageable pile to another, tossing cans of beans, peas, and a surprisingly intact tin of pineapple chunks into the wagon. This side of the city seems to be doing them well, and if any of it survives the snow, Five will have to make sure to come back here again come spring.

By the time midday roughly rolls around, and without the sun in clear view it is always a bit of a faff to figure out when that is, Five plonks himself down on the somehow standing remains of a bench, leaning back with a long, wheezy exhale and uncapping his water canister. After a few strong glugs, dislodging he soot from the back of his throat, Five rolls his head towards Dolores, whose mouth is still moving rapidly as she delves deeper into the topic of _sub-genres._

“How are you still going?” He interrupts with a small smirk, snorting when she glances at him, incredulous. “Dolores, it’s been hours, you’re going to lose your voice.”

A smile of her own tugs at her mouth as she suggests that she would never, and that Five can hardly point any kind of finger at her, considering he has spent a considerable amount of hours, if not days, talking her ear off about math and time and the liner passages of the universe.

“That’s different.” He shrugs.

She challenges that.

“What I talk about is _important_.”

She challenges _that._

“There’s a difference between me getting home and cheesy love stories, Dolores. I’m trying to change time itself.”

The world needs cheesy love stories, she informs him with gravitas, throwing her arms wide, otherwise what is the point of living? There should be love above all else.

“I…” Five goes to protest, only to pause, frowning, and then glares off in the opposite direction, his jaw set.

His Dad would say the same thing, if he were here.

Uncle Ben, as well, maybe, but then again he was always a bit more reserved than Dad.

An unexpected, prickly heat wells up, much to Five’s horror, and swiftly he stands, shoving the heel of his palms into his eye sockets and marching off towards the next miscellaneous pile of rubble. From the wagon, Dolores calls out in confusion, and after a moment she apologises, her sweet voice telling him that what he is doing is important, that she was only teasing, that she has faith in him and his abilities.

Dolores is too good for him, she really is.

He does not bring it up, when he trudges back over with another torn blanket bundled in his arms, but they exchange a warm glance and he helps her sit a bit more comfortably over her kingdom of canned goods and ratty material.

Together, they keep going, up one street and down another, the wagon gradually getting heavier and heavier as he tugs it along. Luckily getting back to base will be a fairly simple task, considering this area of town lacks the colossal skeletons of collapsed skyscrapers sprawled like giants across entire rows of buildings. The roads here, in comparison, are pretty clear.

When dusk hits, Five calls it a day, steering them beside the least rickety-looking wall he can find.

Over the last few nights, the weather has still been warm enough not to warrant building a fire. None of his food requires cooking at the moment, either, most of it eaten cold straight from the tin, and the exhaustion of the day has meant that as soon as the dark properly hits, he is far better off clambering into his bed and getting as much sleep as possible rather than trying to stay awake for no justifiable reason.

Tonight follows the same pattern.

As he tucks into the pineapple chunks, because he would be an idiot not to eat that straight away and relish the sugary sweetness of fruit, Dolores hums thoughtfully, drawing his attention.

Winter will be here soon.

Five slurps some of the syrup. “Yeah, I know.”

Dolores worries.

“Why?”

The nights are long, the snow is endless, the sounds are terrifying, and if their shelter were to collapse under the strain of their expectations, then there is nothing to save them from the banshee blizzards that wreck the world.

Gazing at her, Five puts down the tin. “Dolores-”

He needs to survive, Dolores tells him, her voice oddly watery. She has her face angled away, peering out at the husk of humanity towering over them.

“I will, Dolores. I promise.”

How can he be sure?

“Because I’m too fucking stubborn.” He snips with cheek, but then falls into something more sombre, more serious. “Because I need to get back. Winter…Winter is scary. Last time…” Trailing off, Five stares down at the remaining chunks of pineapple, floating in their nectar-like syrup. “Well, you know. But I’m not going to let myself just roll over and die, Dolores, I promise. I need to get back to Dad and Uncle Ben, to all of them. I can’t help them here, I can’t protect them from…This. But I will. I’m going to get back, I _am_ , and when I do, I’ll put an end to this…End.”

Dolores wetly giggles at his rather pathetic finish to an otherwise meaningful speech, and he nudges her with his elbow, muttering under his breath and silently thanking the darkening skies for hiding his blush. She still chuckles, as if she is able to spy his secrets through the low light anyway.

Dusk swells into evening, which eventually drips down into night, and Five untangles his bedroll from the rope and spreads it out across a cleared scrap of floor. The wagon shall be at his side tonight, Dolores reigning above him as he slumbers, and as he settles down among the dusty-smelling blankets, he gazes up at her, the curve of her head only a silhouette in the oncoming gloom.

She peers down at him.

“Goodnight, Dolores.”

Goodnight, she says, and he can hear the warm curve of her lips.

Letting his eyes slip closed, Five sighs, his head sinking back into the bundle of material that makes up his pillow and pulling the covers close to his chin. Off to his right on the wall, an insect’s rapid feet tap across the remains of what was once merely another mundane structure of human life, fast and frantic, this creature now a fellow survivor in this hell on Earth.

Dolores makes a sad sound, and softly inquires if they are truly not going to acknowledge it.

“Acknowledge what?” Five murmurs, not opening his eyes.

There is a pause, one in which he nearly dozes off, before Dolores, softly, with meaning in her words that turns his tongue as dry as ash, wishes him a happy birthday.

Five bites back the wobble of his mouth, blinking up at the black night clouds above and whispering a hushed, shaky, “Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wasn't planning on posting anything today, but then someone on tumblr reminded me that today is, in fact, my Five's birthday, so I thought I'd prove that I'm not dead and whip up a little something! I will get back to this series, I promise, I'm just having to deal with some things first - Thank you for being so patient!
> 
> Fun fact, you can actually use the number of 772 days to work out how long Five has been in the apocalypse since he was whisked away in 2018! Yay!
> 
> [Tumblr](https://ancientstone.tumblr.com/)


End file.
